Oppose Suppression!

On the evening of Saturday, April 13, 2013 at the CLPP (Civil Liberties & Public Policy) conference at Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, several conference attendees approached our StopPatriarchy.org table with our Call to Action in hand to argue against our condemnation of the sex industry and pornography. We welcomed this argument and got into a lively debate. However, instead of engaging our critique of the social harm caused by pornography and the selling of women’s bodies for sex (how reducing women to sex objects through porn is the “mirror opposite” of reducing women to breeders through denying abortion), these people took offense to the fact that we dared to make this analysis.

If they didn’t want to hear this, they were free to leave our table. Instead, they went to the CLPP organizers and complained that they felt the conference was no longer a “safe space” for them – and the organizers came with police to our table, to tell us we had to leave, under threat of arrest.

April 24, 2013

An Open Letter To the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program and the Hampshire Community:

We are outraged at the illegitimate, immoral and dangerous decision made by CLPP organizers, including CLPP Director Mia Sullivan, to use police to eject us from your conference under threat of arrest simply for peacefully advocating an anti-pornography position to those who approached us at our ownorganizational table.

This action on your part violates the most basic and essential standards of any movement against oppression. The police are the armed enforcers of a highly oppressive and repressive state. There is a long and brutal history of the role of the police - from the murder and wrongful imprisonment of Black Panther Party members in the 1960s to the more recent coordinated brutality inflicted on Occupy protesters across the country - in attempting to crush, punish, and demoralize those who would lift their heads to fight against oppression. No one who calls on the police to suppress and physically threaten others who are fighting against oppression can legitimately claim to be doing anything other than the work of this highly oppressive, violent, and repressive state.

We demand that you repudiate this decision and that you invite us back to have an open forum to put forward our views which were forcibly suppressed to the Hampshire community.

"This is a conference that has workshops on state violence and criminalization - and you call in the force of the state to suppress a political difference?! A political argument - which, frankly, needs to be had. You answer an argument with substance, or you walk away, which people were free to do... The idea that they would call in the police violates every standard of any serious movements of opposition, and even violates their own standards of so-called "safe space" for oppressed people.."

- Sunsara Taylor (on Feminist Current, April 18, 2013)

Send a message to CLPP organizers that you oppose their use of police force to suppress peacefully expressed anti-porn views.

We were motivated to attend by our overall opposition to the war on women, but especially by the extremeness of the attacks on abortion in the last few months. In addition to learning from and connecting with others, we aimed to bring in a program of mass political resistance and struggle to counter the spate of new laws, threats, stigma and restrictions on abortion access throughout the country - starting with the April 25th Student Day of Action for Abortion On Demand and Without Apology and continuing through major plans this summer.

Read for yourself...StopPatriarchy.org's Call to Action -End Pornography & Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women

We are told that "equality for women has been won" and that "there are no limits to what girls can achieve." BULLSHIT!READ MORE

Who is stop patriarchy?

Stop Patriarchy is a group for everyone who wants to FIGHT to STOP the enslavement of women. Not politely lobby against it. Not grumble at the TV. Not simply post things on Twitter. And definitely not sit around waiting for those in power to “come to their senses.” It is also a movement for everyone who can be won to see the need for this – we are fighting aggressively to change minds and to grow and deepen and escalate until we succeed in changing everything. JOIN US!